radox, but now the time gives it proof.I did love you once.

Oph. Indeed, my Lord, you made me believe fo.

Ham. You fhould not have believed me. For virtue cannot fo innoculate our old stock, but we fhall relifh of it. I loved you not.

Oph. I was the more deceived. Ham. Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldft thou be a breeder of finners? I am myfelf indifferent honeft; but yet I could accufe me of such things, that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambi-. tious, with more offences at my beck, than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them fhape, or time to act them in. What thould fuch fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth? we are arrant knaves, believe none of us------Go thy ways to a nunnery-Where's your father? Oph. At home, my Lord.

Ham. Let the doors be fhut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewel.

Oph. Oh help him, you sweet Heavens !

Ham. If thou doft marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry. Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as fnow, thou shalt not escape calumny.---Get thee to a nunnery,-----farewel-----Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wife men know well enough what monsters you make of them-----To a nunnery, go---and quickly too: farewel.

Oph. Heavenly powers restore him!

Ham. I have heard of your painting too, well enough: God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you amble, and you lifp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonnefs your ignorance. Go to, I'll no

more on't, it hath made me mad. I fay, we wil
have no more marriages. Thofe that are married
already, all but one, thall live; the reft fhall keep
as they are. To a nunnery, go. [Exit Hamlet.

Oph. Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! <
The courtier's, foldier's, fcholar's, eye, tongue,
Th' expectancy and rofe of the fair ftate, [fword!
The glafs of fashion, and the mold of form,
Th' obferved of all obfervers, quite, quite down!
I am of ladies moft deject and wretched,
That fucked the honey of his mufic vows:
Now fee that noble and moft fovereign reason,
Like fweet bells jangled out of tune, and harsh;
That unmatched form, and feature of blown youth,
Blafted with ecftafy. Oh, woe is me!

T'have feen what I have feen, fee what I fee.

Enter King and POLONIUS.

King. Love! his affections do not that way tend;
Nor what he fpake, though it lacked form a little,
Was not like madnefs. Something's in his foul,
O'er which his melancholy fits on brood;
And, I do doubt, the hatch and the disclose
Will be fome danger, which, how to prevent,
I have in quick determination

Thus fet it down. He fhall with speed to England,
For the demand of our neglected tribute:
Haply the feas and countries different,
With variable objects, fhall expel

This fomething-fettled matter in his heart;
Whereon his brains still beating, puts him thus
From fafhion of himself.

Pol. It fhall do well.

What think you on't?

But yet I do believe,

The origin and commencement of this grief
Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia ? ---
You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet faid,

t

We heard it all.-----My Lord, do as you please;
[Exit Ophelia.

But if you hold it fit, after the play
Let his Queen-mother all alone intreat him
To fhew his griefs; let her be round with him:
And I'll be placed, fo please you, in the ear
Of all their conference. If the find him not,
To England fend him; or confine him, where
Your wifdom best shall think.

King. It fhall be fo:

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go. [Exeunt.

Enter HAMLET, and two or three of the Players. Ham. Speak the fpeech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lieve the town-crier had spoke my lines. And do not faw the air too much with your hand thus; but ufe all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, I may fay, whirlwind of your paffion, you muft acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the foul, to hear a robuftious periwig-pated fellow tear a paffion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings who (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb fhews and noife: I would have fuch a fellow whipt for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.

1 Play. I warrant your Honour.

Ham. Be not too tame neither; but let your own difcretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this fpecial obfervance, that you o'er-ftep not the modefty of nature; for any thing so overdone is from the purpofe

of playing; whofe end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to na ture; to thew Virtue her own feature, fcorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and preffure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve: the cenfure of which one muft in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh, there be players that I have feen play, and heard others praife, and that highly, (not to speak it prophanely) that neither having the accent of Chriftian, nor the gait of Chriftian, Pagan, nor man, have fo ftrutted and bellowed, that I have thought fome of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well; they imitated humanity fo abominably.

Play. I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us.

Ham. Oh, reform it altogether. And let thofe that play your clowns, fpeak no more than is fet down for them: for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to fet on fome quantity of barren fpectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, fome neceffary queftion of the play be then to be confidered. That's villainous; and fhews a moft pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.

Go make you ready.

[Exeunt Players.

Enter POLONIUS, ROSINCRANTZ, and GUILDEN

STERN.

How now, my Lord; will the King hear this piece

of work?

Pol. And the Queen too, and that Ham. Pid the players make hafte. you two help to haften them?

Will

prefently.
[Exit Polon.

Both. We will, my Lord.

Ham. What, ho, Horatio!

Enter HORATIO to HAMLET.

[Exeunt.

Hor. Here, fweet Lord, at your fervice.
Ham. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
As e'er my conversation coped withal.
Hor. Oh my dear Lord,-

Ham. Nay, do not think I flatter:

For what advancement may I hope from thee,
That no revenue haft, but thy good spirits,
To feed and clothe thee? Should the poor be flat
tered?'

No, let the candied tongue lick abfurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,
Where thrift may follow fawning. Doft thou hear?
Since my dear foul was mistress of her choice,
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath fealed thee for herielf. For thou hast been
As one, in fuffering all, that fuffers nothing:
A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards
Halt ta'en with equal thanks. And bleft are those,
Whofe blood and judgment are fo well comingled,
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger,
To found what stop the pleafe. Give me that man
That is not paffion's flave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core; ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.
Something too much of this.—
There is a play to-night before the King,
One scene of it comes near the circumftance
Which I have told thee of my father's death.
I pr'ythee, when thou feest that act a-foot,
Even with the very comment of thy foul
Obferve mine uncle: if his occult guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have feen:
VOL. XII.

H